Residents of controlled-environment facilities, such as inmates in county, state and federal correctional facilities, are typically permitted to send and receive mail via the postal service. The processing of this “snail mail” represents a significant financial and labor burden, as all letters must be inspected for contraband, inappropriate language content and hidden messages. Moreover, the letters must be sorted by individual housing unit and distributed to the individual residents.
The distribution of mail to residents of a controlled-environment facility is also an extremely costly and labor-intensive activity. For every piece of mail received at the facility, a facility official must look up the resident associated with the correspondence, determine whether the resident is allowed to receive correspondence at all and/or determine whether the resident is allowed to receive the correspondence from the individual who sent it, sort the mail for delivery based on resident housing assignment, and then spend hours delivering the mail throughout the facility. Since this is a daily activity, it demands substantial facility resources to accomplish the task. Further, mail that arrives at a correctional facility via the postal service is often contaminated, such as with a biohazard. The personnel who are responsible for opening, examining, reading and sorting the mail are often necessarily equipped with gloves and masks to prevent infection. This aspect of the job affects personnel recruitment and retention.
In a correctional facility situation, inmate mail can also be a source of intelligence with respect to criminal investigations, and the like. For this reason, archiving of correspondence would be helpful, but the practice is not widespread due to cost (e.g., scanning, maintenance of storage media, etc.).
Electronic correspondence is now being permitted in some correctional facilities. There are several variants on this process. In some locations, inmates have access to computers and can send and receive electronic messages in a manner similar to traditional email. In other locations, electronic messages, such as sent by friends and family, are reviewed and printed for hardcopy distribution. Inmates may be allowed to respond to the inbound messages by submitting a hardcopy message that is scanned and transmitted to an outside recipient. The systems and processes needed for managing electronic and traditional “snail mail” correspondence are typically very different and often require duplication of effort.
Residents of controlled-environment facilities, such as inmates, are often permitted to purchase food and clothing items through what is typically referred to as “commissary.” These items may be offered through one or more point-of-sale (POS) walk-up windows or “stores” in a facility or may be ordered in advance and delivered by a designated commissary provider. The personnel that prepare the commissary packages are subject to background checks and are monitored to prevent contraband introduction into the facility in this manner. Prior to distribution, the orders are inspected by facility staff for potential contraband and sorted by housing unit.